MILITARY MEDICINE CHAMBERLAIN. 249 



The conquest of yellow fever is a far-reaching achievement to 

 which America can lay entire claim, and which especially reflects 

 credit upon the Medical Corps of the United States Army. In 1900 

 the Army board, consisting of Maj. Walter Reed, Maj. James 

 Carroll, and Contract Surgeons Lazear and Agramonte, proved by a 

 series of brilliant and conclusive experiments that yellow fever is 

 transmitted by the bite of a mosquito, the Stegomyia fasciata. Bas- 

 ing his sanitary work on the discoveries of Reed and his associates, 

 our present Surgeon General, William C. Gorgas, freed Cuba of 

 yellow fever and made possible the building of the Panama Canal, 

 thereby establishing his claim to be called the greatest sanitary expert 

 the world has known. 



The experiments which established the mosquito theory of yellow 

 fever transmission are so recent and well known that I shall not 

 enter into them except in one particular. Dr. Lazear died from 

 yellow fever contracted while at this work. Acting Asst. Surg. 

 Robert P. Cooke and several volunteers from the Hospital Corps 

 slept for 30 nights in a small unventilated room, using the bedding 

 and wearing the garments just taken from fatal cases of yellow fever 

 and which were soiled with the black vomit and excretions of these 

 patients. Maj. Carroll first, and subsequently several members of the 

 Hospital Corps, submitted to the bites of mosquitoes which had pre- 

 viously fed on yellow fever victims. Several of them contracted the 

 disease, and Maj. Carroll narrowly escaped death. The world at 

 large recognizes that it requires high courage for the soldier to 

 charge the enemy, even in the excitement of battle and surrounded 

 by his comrades. In the present European war hundreds of medical 

 men have met wounds and death in serving the cause of fatherland 

 and of humanity under fire. It called for courage of a different quality, 

 but of quite as high an order, to enable a man to submit himself, in 

 cold blood, for experimental infection with a disease which was as 

 mysterious, as painful, and as fatal as yellow fever. All honor is due 

 Maj. Carroll, Dr. Cooke, and those Hospital Corps men who stood 

 this test in the interests of humanity and to the everlasting credit of 

 military medicine. There is no better example of the sentiment that 

 " Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew." 



